


Madman's Folly

by icarus_chained



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Assassins & Hitmen, End of the World, Gen, Gods, High Fantasy, Knights - Freeform, Mages, Magic, Monsters, Prompt Fic, Quests, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 18:13:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a kingdom under threat from a storm of magic and madness, two spies consider the band of heroes they've sent north to deal with it.</p><p>A quick sketch of an Avengers High Fantasy AU, for a prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Madman's Folly

**Author's Note:**

> I think this came out more Dragonlance than anything?

"... Will they be enough, do you think?"

The voice was soft, calm. As though the answer was only of mild interest, and did not potentially hold the fate of kingdoms, even worlds. Nicholas, his lip quirking involuntarily in amusement, looked sideways at the man who was his right hand and his one good eye all in one, one of the most dangerous Grey Hands in the kingdom. Soft and harmless-looking in his clerk's attire, Phillip looked back impassively, his thoughtful frown more suited to a question of court finances than evil mages, world-shattering magics, and the band of heroes desperately pulled together to fight them.

Was it any wonder, Nicholas mused lightly, that so many underestimated the man? But that was beside the point, perhaps. That was idle musing, and the question had been a serious one, for all it had been lightly asked.

Would they be enough, did he think? In the face of the storm brewing in the north, in the face of this mad, halfling giant and his armies from beyond the void, would their scraped-together little band of heroes and monsters be enough to stave off destruction?

They didn't look enough, on the face of it. Six men and women, against armies, against _gods_. That was the stuff of stories and ballads sung by wine-addled bards, not a real strategy designed by men with kingdoms to protect. Six people on a quest to save the world, that wasn't _real_. Couldn't be. And certainly Nicholas' lords and masters didn't think so. In the midst of ordering their mages and alchemists to work on ever more powerful and ever more destructive spells, they had made that very, very clear. Freedom, they said, safety, these things were not won by warriors. They were won by _weapons_.

Nicholas wasn't sure he agreed. No. That was dissembling. Nicholas _did not_ agree. He never had. Weapons were useful, yes. The better armed you were, the more options you had. Weapons were always good things to have. But a sword didn't mean a damn thing unless you had someone decent to wield it. The most destructive spell in the world didn't matter a damn if you didn't have someone to cast it, someone to tell them where to aim it, someone to make sure that it wasn't tossed back in their face by something they hadn't seen coming. 

Weapons didn't win a damn thing. It was people who did that. Nicholas had believed that, with every fibre of his being, from the very first moment he stepped into a shadow and quietly killed someone to keep his kingdom safe. He had believed it when he stood behind a broken lord and first began to gather their Hands around them. Not an order of knights, holy and sanctified, like those who had fought the last great war. Something greyer, more secret. Something more battered by far. But something he had believed, then and now, would protect everything they had loved. A network of people, a web of whispers, to stand between their kingdom and the darkness.

And now, he had sent six more people, six warriors, north into damnation. It wasn't the same, perhaps. Not quite. Battered you could call them, certainly. But not secret. Not grey. These warriors, these six, they were far too colourful for that. But even still ... perhaps not so different, either.

A god and a monster. A knight and an assassin. A mage and a ranger. A group that ranged from the holy to the profane, from the high and mighty to the scruffiest outcasts. A bunch of crazy, impractical, arrogant and unworkable maniacs, cast in at the deep end and sent to stave off the annihilation of the light. They were nothing a sane man would send. They were nothing a sane man would _contemplate_.

But a sane man hadn't looked into the abyss in that half-giant's eyes. A sane man hadn't cast his whispers out into the void and found madness whispering back. Nicholas might be mad, he might have only one good eye, but he had seen things no-one else had and he knew damn good and well that sanity wasn't going to win this one, any more than his masters' stockpile of city-killers was going to.

A knight, though. The battered remnant of a long-finished war, torn adrift by the whim of gods to survive as best he could in a world made strange and alien. A knight who had stood up despite that, despite everything he had lost, and offered his sword out of nothing but the belief that people deserved to be protected.

A demigod. The brother of madness, sent by his father and by his own sense of duty to undo the horror his kin would unleash. A man who grieved for bonds lost and broken, for the blood shed between himself and one he loved, but yet a man who would stand against that loved one for the sake of all who would die if he did not.

A monster. A half-mad giant in his turn, if one of different origins. A beast moved by rage and by pain, a monster to be unleashed rather than trusted, but behind it, a _man_. A man moved by sorrow and by love, by regret for the pain he had caused, by desire to use his monstrous nature for some higher goal.

A mage. A rich and arrogant man, one who might once have agreed with Nicholas' masters, who might have put his faith in weapons and no more. A man who had been betrayed since then, a man who had been enslaved, a man who had come through fire and death in a roar of vengeance and done it with nothing but his own hands. A man who had learned, perhaps, the value of _people_.

And then, to round it out, to bring some shade of grey and secrecy back to this cavalcade of madness, two of Nicholas' own. Two Hands, to walk in the shadows their merry band of larger-than-life comrades weren't small enough to fit inside.

A ranger, the last survivor of the group who had first brought those whispers of madness south to Nicholas. An archer who had seen, first hand, the storm of horror brewing in the north, who had suffered under that half-giant's hands, been used to deliver his messages and show Nicholas the costs of standing against him. A man, Nicholas thought, with all the reason in the world to have his vengeance on the creature.

And an assassin, at the last. A woman of exacting skill and courage, the best that had ever taken the silver hand. A quiet figure feared the length and breadth of the eastern marches, a flash of knives in shadow and the slow slide of poison along a blade. A woman who had come to them, years ago, in search of honour. In search of a cause to balance the trail of blood behind her, and a goal worth laying down her life to achieve. 

It was some small consolation, Nicholas thought wryly, that at least this quest would grant her that. All of them, perhaps. Even if it was madness, even if it was folly. At least, he thought, those who died for this madman's folly would not do so without some recompense.

Cold comfort, perhaps. But he had _seen_. He had seen something in them, those six. He had seen something in the font of madness in the north. He had seen pain, he had seen insanity, he had seen all the howling of the void. But he had seen hope, too. He had seen six people who had _been_ there. Six people who had be cast adrift and clawed with battered, bloodied hands back to standing, six people who had be cast into the storm before and fought their way out. Gods and monsters, knights and assassins, yes, all of those, but deeper than that. More fundamental than that. 

He had seen, at the heart of it, six people who would stand, and keep standing, until all the world fell apart around them, and then stand some more. He had seen people who could lose and lose and lose, and keep on fighting anyway. He had seen people that all the madness of the world could batter into the dust, and not destroy.

He had seen a line, battered and grey, that would stand between his kingdom and the darkness.

Did he think they would be enough, he mused, coming back to the tower room and the sly, lethal little man who kept him company inside it. Meeting Phillip's eyes, the placid amusement there, the wry, desperate hope, and baring his teeth in something that might, perhaps, be taken for a smile.

"I don't know," he said, slow and bright and vicious, into the dawning of Phillip's grin. "I don't know if they'll be enough to stop the bastard. But I know for damn sure they'll try. And I know something else, too."

"Oh?" Phillip asked, light as though it wasn't blood they spun between them, or the ending of worlds. "And what would that be, sir?" 

Nicholas smiled, black and deadly, a bittersweet shine in his one good eye. "I know," he said softly, "that powers of the void or not, I really, _really_ wouldn't want to be in the line of fire when they decide hell with it."

A madman's folly, oh yes. But if the world was ending and you were going to go out with a bang regardless, then you might as well pick the most explosive people for the job, mightn't you?

And whatever else Nicholas could claim, he'd always had a _damn_ good eye for people.


End file.
